Chapter 7: Prayer
Following the rainstorm, the evening wind started to carry the sll of an autumn night. Cicadas halfway to the grave made dull buzzing sounds as they crawled around on the ground, and the sunflowers to the side of the road had their heads drooped like stray dogs, never to lift up again.
Sumr was starting to end.
Freed of Touka, I drank gin by myself, I smoked by myself, I got als by myself, and I drank gin by myself again. The life cycle she had built up for over 20 days fell apart in just one. You can say it about anything: building it up is hard, but demolishing it is shockingly easy.
That said, my eating habits had gotten a bit better. I bought ingredients from the supermarket every evening, and took the ti to cook them. I didn't grow to hate cup ran or anything. But cooking was just the thing to keep from boredom. While I was in the kitchen doing work that took concentration, I didn't have to think about extraneous nonsense.
I didn't have any experience cooking for myself, but I naturally picked up the procedures while watching Touka do it. I relied on my mory to replicate each of the dishes she'd made. After my al, I washed and put away the utensils, then drank gin again. When I had nothing to do, I listened to music on the record player she left behind. The old music that just felt tedious when we listened to it together, to my surprise, wasn't so bad when I listened to it alone. Right now, so simple and slow music was just what I was looking for.
On the fourth day, Emori contacted . I woke up from a nap and checked the voice mails on my phone.
I played it without even thinking about it.
"I've figured out who Touka Natsunagi is. I'll contact you again later."
I put the phone down by my bed and closed my eyes.
Two hours later, I got a phone call.
I showered for the first ti in two days, put on new clothes, and headed for the children's park.
*
"You want the long explanation, or the short explanation?"
That's how Emori broke the ice. I thought for just five seconds, then said "the long one, please." While part of did want to hear the short explanation first to learn the truth, I would probably be asking for details afterward either way. I would try to get the most amount of information I could, in an attempt to co to my own conclusion that might differ from his. In that case, I thought, I should get the long explanation first.
"Well then, we're going to have to go a ways back." Then Emori had a bit of a hesitant pause. "Why was it not you, an involved party, but , a third party, who could see through to the truth about Touka Natsunagi? To explain the logic there, I'm gonna have to talk about a ti I was seriously considering buying Mimories. And to explain why I was considering buying Mimories, I'm gonna need to go into so of my personal life. It's not the happiest stuff, and not the kind of stuff you want to talk about in public..."
He scratched the back of his neck and breathed out.
"Well, maybe it might not be so bad to open up about it to you, Amagai."
I nodded and urged him to continue.
"Take a look at this."
With that, he showed sothing: a dirty school notebook.
"It's a notebook from middle school," he explained. "Turn it over."
On the back of the notebook was a student identification, with a photo of middle-school age Emori.
That said, if I had been shown this photo without any context, I probably wouldn't realize it was Emori.
That's how different he was in this photo compared to him now.
To put it bluntly: he was ugly.
"Awful, right?", Emori said. Not self-derisively, but like he was spitting sothing out. "I had a miserable childhood. None of the boys or girls wanted to be around . I was teased by older students all the ti, and even younger students made fun of . Hell, even the teachers were reluctant to deal with . I was just praying for ti to pass quicker in the corner of the classroom, day after day."
I compared the person in the photo with the one before my eyes. Sure, there were faint similarities between them. But said similarities were on the level of "tofu and natto are made from the sa base ingredients"; you could find them if you tried, just as much as you could find similarities between any two total strangers.
"I made up my mind to change myself in spring, when I was 18. March 9th, four years ago," he continued. "When I was walking ho alone from graduation, this couple walked in front of . They were wearing the sa uniforms as and holding diplomas, so I knew they were graduates from my school. In fact, then I noticed the girl was one of my classmates. The one person in class who would always say hi to every day. Secretly, I felt sothing toward her, though it could barely even be called a crush. I knew I wasn't the kind of guy who could get with her, so I didn't make any moves, but during class or at lunch, I'd sneak peeks at her when I got the chance."
He took the notebook from my hand and put it back in his pocket. I wondered if he periodically looked at that notebook to remind himself of his past self. Like taking a bitter dicine.
"You know why I didn't notice she was one half of that couple right away? 'Cause she wore a totally different expression walking with her boyfriend than anything I saw in the classroom. Ahh, so that's how she smiles when she's actually happy, I thought. She was a pretty girl, so I wasn't really shocked she had a boyfriend. I hadn't gotten my hopes up that she was mine or anything, so I couldn't possibly get jealous now. I'd already estimated myself to be at rock bottom, so nothing could make more miserable from there. I just thought, "she looks happy.""
He glanced at , as if to say "you probably know how that feels."
Of course I do, my eyes responded.
"But for so reason... while I was getting ready to live my new life, I was constantly rembering what I saw then, and getting my heart thrown into disarray. While I was packing, while I was going between the dump and my ho, while I was buying living supplies, I kept ruminating over the scene I saw on the way ho from graduation. After I was done preparing for my move, I lay down in my empty room with arms and legs outstretched, and thought long and hard about what the hell I was doing to myself. And that night, I made a resolution to myself: I'll start over from scratch."
As if waiting for the aning of those words to soak into , he paused for a few seconds.
"Luckily, I didn't know a single person at my new school. I bumped up my original moving date and started living on my own. And then, I tried everything I could think of for the sake of my "rebirth." For a while, I hardly showed my face around college, 'cause I was working so hard on my body I nearly coughed up blood. I researched every night about how I should dress and act for people to like , and put those things into practice in places with no ties to school. And I tampered with my face as much as you can without a scalpel being involved. Once I'd gotten enough confidence, I started to show up to class in earnest. I made tons of friends and attractive partners in no ti, but I still didn't work any less on self-improvent. In fact, seeing visible results for my efforts lit the fires of ambition in . I put tons of effort, like I was possessed, into appearance and everything else. By a year later, I had girls fawning on without even sneezing in their direction."
Then he flashed a smile, as if firing off a test shot. It was a smile that would make any girl who ca to college full of dreams instantly fall in love.
"It was like the world revolved around . After that, I started feeling eager to get back my lost childhood. Wanting to get revenge on both my past self and those who wouldn't give him the ti of day, I slept with loads of young, pretty girls. Like so noble from the Middle Ages who bathed in the blood of young girls to keep up their good looks. I thought that would save the other inside . I thought I'd be able to give salvation to the kid who could only sit in the corner of the classroom and enviously watch from afar as his classmates had childhoods."
At this point in the story, Emori finally took a sip of beer. It had probably gone warm a while ago, so he scrunched up his face and looked at the label on the can. Then he poured out the contents on the ground and started smoking, using the can as an ashtray. I lit a cigarette to match him.
"In my fourth year of college, in sumr, I finally ca to my senses. And I had a revelation. I can struggle all I want, but it's impossible to get back a lost childhood. As it turns out, you can only have the experiences a 15-year-old should have at 15, so if I didn't have them at that age, no fulfilling experiences after the fact can save the spirit of 15-year-old . Took too long to realize sothing so obvious. Everything felt futile then, and I gave up my womanizing. I deleted all my lady friends' contact info, no exceptions. I befriended you a little after that, Amagai. I guess at the ti, I was looking for sobody who felt a similar emptiness."
Him saying that reminded . The girls who visited Emori's room near-daily did stop showing up right around the ti he and I got to know each other.
I never even stopped to think that those two phenonons had a cause-and-effect relationship.
"I learned about Green Green at the end of sumr - right around this tifra." He finally spoke those words. Gradually, he was approaching the main topic. "It was the perfect product for a childhood-craving zombie like . The wonder cure for an unfulfilling childhood, which gives users mories of a beautiful one. I leapt for it right away. I tried to, anyway. I made it as far as making an appointnt for counseling. This can save 12-year-old and 15-year-old , I thought. But just before it ca up, I rethought it and canceled."
I got a word in for the first ti. "Why was that?"
His mouth warped as if in agony.
"What's more hollow than my most beautiful mories being soone else's fabrication?"
I nodded.
I felt I could now fully understand why this man had befriended .
"I gave up purchasing Green Green, but my interest in Mimories themselves stuck around. In particular, I was really fascinated by the job of "Mimory engineer" I learned about while researching Mimories. I've had to confront my own mories way more than your average person. I felt like a person like who has countless cases of "if only it'd been like this" in his past might just be suited to be a Mimory engineer. I gathered as much information as I could on that occupation. I think it was in the process of collecting that information that I learned about her. It took a while to rember, being an article I just skimd over nearly a year ago, but that's why I felt like I'd seen that girl you were walking with a few weeks ago, Amagai."
Emori showed a news article on his phone. At the top was a date from three years ago.
The Genius 17-Year-Old Mimory Engineer
"The preface went a little long, but now for the conclusion," Emori said. "Touka Natsunagi is a Mimory engineer. The Mimories about Touka Natsunagi in your head, Amagai, she probably made them herself."
He scrolled the screen down and zood in on the photo below. A familiar face jumped out at .
It was Touka Natsunagi's smile that I hadn't seen in four days.
*
Back at the apartnt, I reread the article over and over. After doing that, I gathered information about her on the web.
Touka Natsunagi wasn't her real na, but there was only the slightest difference between her real na and her alias. One of the consonants in her surna was different, and that was all. She probably thought this minimal disguise would be sufficient for . Or maybe in the event she said her real na by mistake, she was making sure she could talk her way out of it.
At the ti, she was the youngest Mimory engineer in history. She was hired as a Mimory engineer by a major clinic as young as 16, and worked on many Mimories while going through high school.
In just three years, she created over 50 years' worth of Mimories. This was an absurd pace, regardless of her youth. And it wasn't all quantity, but quality as well. Needless to say, she drew attention in the world of Mimory engineering as a rising star, but she sent in a resignation letter just before her 20th birthday and hadn't been heard from since then. It made the local news, at least. People who were anticipating her work were left to despair. The Mimories she drew up were sohow fundantally different from those of other Mimory engineers; no one was able to imitate her.
She referred to that unparalleled difference as "prayer."
In a short interview on a news site, Touka answered the reporter's questions cautiously with basic and harmless words. The interviewer went through great lengths to try and get a childish reaction or so nefarious statent out of the 17-year-old prodigy, but the further forward he stepped, the deeper she retreated into her shell. So she responded with modest, safe, and boring answers.
There were only two questions at the end that were able to get her to speak her thoughts. The first was: "People say the Mimories you create are entirely different from what other Mimory engineers make. How would you concretely describe what that "difference" is?"
I guess I'd say "prayer."
When the interviewer tried to dig deeper into what she ant by "prayer," Touka gave a simple answer. "Basically, I an earnestness."
But in truth, it was probably sothing for which no word except "prayer" would work.
At least that's how I felt.
The interviewer went on to ask her ultimate goal as a Mimory engineer. Touka answered this like so.
I want to make Mimories so powerful, they throw that person's life into chaos.
And was I the test subject?
Had her aim been to throw my life into chaos through Mimories?
Had her smiles, and her tears, all just been an act to shake up my heart?
I guess I should be irritated. I guess I should be indignant about being used to feed her ego. One month ago, I probably would have been.
But that was impossible for now. Only knowing the truth now was too late. Any attempt to cast negative feelings toward her would be firmly impeded by my mories of this sumr break. It wasn't just "I can't hate her." I looked at this photo of 17-year-old Touka over and over, and every ti, my heart was filled with yearning.
Strangely enough, 17-year-old Touka looked a bit older than the 20-year-old Touka I knew. In the photo, her eyes were slightly bleary, and the fact she wore a high school uniform felt out of place, even. It might have honestly fit present-day Touka better.
In fact, now that I was thinking about this, 20-year-old her was way too young. In the photo, she was passing as 20, and in the present, she was passing as 17.
What did this strange inversion an? Had the photo just co out bad because she was nervous? Had quitting her job freed her from stress, making her look younger? Had she tried to get as close as possible to her appearance in the Mimories to help deceive ?
The 17-year-old Touka who gave the cara an awkward smile looked like it could be a vision of herself from the near future.
My thoughts wouldn't stop racing. All I could rely on for sleepless nights was, you guessed it, alcohol. I poured the waters of forgetfulness into a glass, and got lost in an alley of gin with a ruin-like atmosphere.
My dad was also a lover of alcohol. There are drunks who drink to enjoy reality and those who drink to forget reality, and he was decisively the latter. If he didn't end up a Mimory addict, he'd probably have ended up a more dangerous alcohol addict. He seed to bear subtle pain which no one would soothe, always looking like he was suffocating.
My sole objective in life was to never end up like my dad, yet maybe I did end up rather similar to my dad, just with a change in presentation. A life where I keep averting my eyes from anything inconvenient to , the situation continues to worsen, and yet I keep looking away.
While gazing absentmindedly at the "one-line diary" hung on the wall, I realized my eyes were losing focus. I closed them, and found myself on a ship rocked by tall waves. I staggered over to the bathroom and emptied out my stomach. It had been a month since I last drank so much I threw up. It was that day I decided to drink the Lethe, couldn't do it, had a case of mistaken identity, drank in desperation, was kicked out of the bar, walked ho to the apartnt, and t her.
Touka Natsunagi.
There was just one thing that I was stuck on. On the last day, Touka told this about her reason for acting like my childhood friend.
"You'll know eventually. It's a pretty complex objective, but I think you can manage to get the gist of it."
But could you call "throwing that person's life into chaos" a complex objective?
And did "I think you can manage to get the gist of it" imply that it was sothing the average person would find harder to figure out?
I can't help but feel I'm overlooking sothing major.
If you just wanted to throw my life into chaos, there should have been countless other ways.
Just leaving the contents of the Green Green as-is, appearing before as "a girl who resembles the childhood friend in the Mimories," and putting on the act of a fateful encounter would surely have ensnared , inviting little in the way of unnecessary doubt. It's hard to imagine she lacked the ability to conceive of that.
And yet she appeared before as the childhood friend in the Mimories herself. She purposefully chose an approach with low odds of success. Does that just go to show how confident she was in the influence of her Mimories?
It can't just be that. She had to beco the childhood friend I adored, and no one else. Until I could figure out the reason why that was, I wouldn't be able to say I understood her true intentions.
My thoughts continued to race even more.
*
At so point, the sky had started to brighten. Even with the power of alcohol, I hadn't been able to sleep a wink, and having drank beyond the recomnded dosage, my body felt horribly sluggish. My eyes were bleary, my head heavy, my throat hurt, and I was hungry, too.
I crawled out of bed. It was probably my empty stomach that kept sleep away, but the childhood friend who would make breakfast was gone now. I checked the fridge, and it only had a few shreds of cabbage and so orange juice. When I drank the orange juice to the last drop, it only seed to make my stomach worse. I gave up on sleeping, put on my sandals, and left the room in my sleepwear.
Just as I opened the door, sothing moved in the corner of my vision. While in the act of closing my door, I instinctively turned to it.
It was a girl. She looked anywhere from 17 to 20. She was dressed like she'd visited soone's funeral far away, then returned on the earliest train she could. Her limbs, faintly lit, were like a transparent white, and her long, soft black hair was blown up by the wind in the hall,
and ti stopped.
An invisible nail fixed us in place, her in the pose of opening her door, and myself closing my door with the back of my hand.
As if we temporarily lost the concept of words, we looked at each other for a long ti.
The first thing to resu movent was my mouth.
"...Touka?"
I spoke her na.
"...And who would you be?"
The girl had forgotten mine.
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